Burn Now
by Lamia of the Dark
Summary: AU. After the fall of the Dark Lord, Lucius and Rodolphus end up in Azkaban. Narcissa has an emotional breakdown and quickly turns into a drug addict, and Bellatrix is stuck raising Draco on her own. BellaxVoldemort in later chapters.
1. Sparks of Flame

**DISCLAIMER: All things Harry Potter belong to J.K. Rowling.**

-- Burn Now --  
(What Was Once Breathing)

When the Aurors came for her, Bellatrix answered the door covered in ashes. Her hair was partly singed and she held a charred lump of fuzz in one hand.

"Draco threw his toy dragon in the fire," she said by way of explanation, tossing what was presumably the remains of the stuffed dragon onto the couch. "Apparently he thought that since it was a dragon, it would _like_ to be in the fire. Of course, once it started to burn he wanted it back out again, but it was already too late to save the thing." She took a moment to brush the worst of the ash from the front of her robes before addressing the Aurors again. "Is this about my husband?"

She moved back from the doorway and gestured for them to come in. The Aurors glanced at each other. Of course, news of Rodolphus Lestrange's arrest had already reached his wife. They had it on good authority that she was a Death Eater and they'd come to take her in for questioning, expecting a fight.

Yet here she was, acting like a common housewife, inviting them into her home. Surely one of the Dark Lord's followers wouldn't react this way? Unless she was a very good actress...

"Behwa!" a tiny voice whined.

Bellatrix moved farther into the room and scooped Draco up from the playpen.

"My sister didn't take the news very well," Bellatrix said conversationally. "Which is why I'm taking care of this one for now."

Lucius Malfoy had also been arrested, for the very same crime as Bellatrix's husband, along with Barty Crouch Jr.

The Aurors noticed that the living room floor was scattered with toys and children's books and various other things that one just doesn't bother to pick up when all their time is spent caring for a small child.

They wouldn't have expected someone who had such a reputation for being a coldhearted bitch to have any maternal instinct, either. Yet here she was, caring for her sister's child as if he were her own.

"If we could just look through your husband's things...?" one of the Aurors put forth hesistantly.

"Yes, of course, but if you're looking for Dark artifacts, I don't think he kept any here," Bellatrix answered in a polite tone, getting straight to the point. "He didn't want me to get involved in any of that, although I _did_ have an interest..." She trailed off, as though realizing she'd said something she shouldn't have.

The Aurors glanced at each other again. This encounter with Bellatrix Lestrange was nothing like what they'd been expecting, but most of the Dark Lord's minions had already been rounded up and they were going on mostly rumors at this point anyway.

They searched the house but found nothing of particular interest.

Once the Aurors were gone, Bellatrix breathed a sigh of relief. She never thought she'd be grateful for all the stupid things her mother taught her.

_"There is nothing inherently wrong with being intelligent, my dear. However, a man will only marry a woman that he believes to be less intelligent than himself. So you have to play dumb when you talk them, if you want to have any hope of catching a husband for yourself. Just smile and speak politely, and he'll never know the difference."_

Of course, she'd thought her mother's advice was a crock of bull and hadn't resorted to such tactics with Rodolphus. But it had really come in handy just now.

Honestly, she would have given anything to be out there searching for the Dark Lord with the other Death Eaters... the ones who hadn't been arrested yet, anyway.

But no, she was stuck here, taking care of Draco while Narcissa had a total emotional breakdown over her husband getting arrested and being publicly outed as a Death Eater.

- tbc -

**A/N: I know, I know. I shouldn't be starting a new fic when I have so much unfinished crap to take of. But the idea with baby Draco throwing his stuffed dragon in the fireplace hit me hard, and I thought it'd be perfect for the opening scene of this fic (which has been in the works for quite a while now.)**

**Reviews are love.**


	2. Tamed Fire

--Burn Now--  
(What Was Once Breathing)

"My dwagon," Draco whined.

Bellatrix ignored him.

"Behwa, Behwa! My dwagon!" he whined louder, reaching for it with one hand and pulling her hair with the other.

"You destroyed the damn dragon!" she snapped, losing her temper, and smacked his hand to make him let go of her hair.

Draco stopped whining and stared at her in shock for a moment. Then his eyes filled with tears and he began to cry for real.

Bellatrix deposited the hysterical toddler in the playpen and went upstairs to change her clothes. Draco only shrieked louder when she left the room, but once it looked like she wasn't coming back, he stopped screaming his lungs out and simply pouted until she returned.

"Are you ready to behave now?" she asked, frowning.

Draco sniffled and reached one little hand out toward her.

_Aw, he's kind of cute when he isn't throwing a fit or destroying things_.

Bellatrix had never tried to have a child of her own. Partly because she wasn't sure how well she'd handle the whole being-a-mother thing, but mostly because her husband was a sloppy lover and she avoided having sex with him unless she was too shitfaced to care.

Bellatrix leaned down and scooped Draco up into her arms. She got an odd warm feeling in her chest when the child snuggled against her.

He was still crying a little. She rubbed his back and made shushing noises, wondering the whole time if she was doing it right and wishing for the first time in her life that her mother was still alive, so she could have someone to ask for help with this.

_Narcissa was always the useless one_, she thought bitterly. _Going and having a mental breakdown over Lucius being arrested, not thinking about what would happen to her child with both of his parents out of commission_.

Of course, Bellatrix had no idea that just as Draco was falling asleep in her arms, her sister was NOT actually collapsed uselessly from a mental breakdown.

Narcissa was, at that moment, skulking around an alley in a shady part of town, trading some precious Malfoy family heirlooms for drugs.

While Bellatrix was putting Draco down for the night in the before-now-unused nursery, Narcissa was back home at Malfoy Manor - snorting one drug, popping another, and injecting a third before she was finally in a place where the emotional agony of becoming a social pariah after her husband was publicly outed as a Death Eater could no longer reach her.

Bellatrix changed into her nightgown and curled up in her favorite armchair with a cheap romance novel. After reading a few chapters, she was so frustrated with the stupid characters and the stupid things they did in the story that she threw the book across the room. Luckily, it only hit the wall and nothing breakable. Like the mirror, for example.

About the time that Bellatrix actually went to bed, Narcissa was slipping into a drug-induced coma.

-tbc-

**Reviews are love.**


	3. Conflagration

-- Burn Now --  
(What Was Once Breathing)

The next morning, after getting Draco fed and dressed without too much fuss (maybe she was kind of getting the hang of this childcare thing after all), Bellatrix went to Malfoy Manor with the full intention of returning the child to her sister.

She knocked on the door for ten minutes before admitting to herself that her plan had an obvious flaw. Narcissa was either not home or not willing to take her child back at this point in time.

Also, Draco had become rather excited when he'd seen that they were at his house, but now he was starting to get upset.

"Shh," Bellatrix murmured, cuddling the child closer to her.

"Go in," Draco whined.

"We can't right now, baby," she told him gently, hiding her own frustration at the situation from the child.

There was no other way to get into the house. The Malfoy family had been paranoid security nuts for centuries and their family home was well protected against intruders.

Bellatrix had no choice but to go home for the time being. Draco clung to her for the rest of the day, crying every time she tried to put him down. Eventually she realized that the cause of this behavior was that he was upset over not being able to see his mother. She supposed it must be hard for a child so small to be separated from his parents like this. She spent the rest of the day trying to cheer up her nephew, to little avail. He was still acting terribly clingy at bedtime, and rather than endure the endless crying that was sure to come if she left him alone in the nursery, she dragged the crib into her bedroom.

"No-o-o-o-o," Draco whined when she laid him in the crib.

"It's time for bed," Bellatrix replied firmly as she tucked him in. Her voice softened as she told him, "I'll be right here. There's my bed, see?"

Obediently, Draco turned his head and looked through the bars of his crib. Reassured that she wasn't going to leave him, Draco settled down pretty quickly. It had been a long day for the little guy. Within minutes he was fast asleep, curled up with a stuffed raven - his new favorite now that the dragon was gone.

_Oh, great. The kid has abandonment issues already… Thanks Lucius, thanks Narcissa_, she thought sarcastically to herself as she crawled into her own bed.

Things continued in this manner for some time. Every few days Bellatrix would go to Malfoy Manor, and every time her sister did not answer the door. Every time this happened, Draco would become more upset that he had the last time. She wouldn't bring him with her if there were a way to avoid it but as things stood, there was no one she felt she could safely entrust him to for an evening.

She had to admit, though, she was getting pretty good at the whole parenting thing. Besides the basic human necessities, the thing Draco seemed to crave the most was affection - which Bella provided in copious amounts. (She'd grown pretty attached to the kid these past few weeks.) The only times she really had trouble getting him to settle down were the days they went to Malfoy Manor.

And so the cycle continued.

Until the day Bellatrix caught Narcissa returning from a drug run.

She was surprised by how terrible her sister looked. Thin and wasted, her eyes sunken and hollow, her hair lank and unkempt. Looking - and _smelling_ - as though she hadn't changed her clothes or bathed for weeks on end.

Draco didn't even recognize his own mother and clung to Bella in fear upon seeing Narcissa.

She didn't realize how bad things really were until she got inside the house and saw that the once-opulent manor was half-stripped of its valuables. That's when she figured out what Narcissa had been doing in the months since Lucius's arrest. Her sister was a drug addict. And once the Malfoy family's fortunes ran out, Narcissa would probably resort to selling her body on the streets… The thought made Bella's stomach turn.

Bellatrix put Draco in the upstairs nursery (one of the few rooms that had, for the most part, not been ravaged) and left a house elf watching over him as she went to confront her sister.

"_Pull yourself together. You have to stop this. Think about your child!_" Bellatrix roared.

Narcissa, already half-stoned, did not flinch in the face of her sister's wrath.

"Oh, but Bella, he likes you so much. Keep him for me, please? Just for a little while longer?" Narcissa pleaded. "Just until-"

"_Until WHAT?_" Bellatrix shrieked, overcome with fury. "_Until you're so burned out you CAN'T take care of him anyway? Until you run out of money and things to sell? Until you need ME to take care of YOU, too?!_"

When they returned to the Lestrange estate that night, Draco was strangely quiet as his aunt's helpless tears rained down on him.

_-_tbc_-_

**A/N: Reviews are love.**


	4. Firecracker

-- Burn Now --  
(What Was Once Breathing)

_**Dear Mrs. Lestrange,  
**__**We regret to inform you that you husband has been executed on account of**_

Bellatrix threw the letter into the fire without reading the rest of it. She didn't really care what excuse the Ministry had found to finish her husband off. She had never cared about Rodolphus much anyway. They'd gotten along alright, she supposed, but they'd really only married each other to put an end to their mothers' nagging (and in her case, to stop her mother worrying that she would run off with some worthless piece of trash like that no-good sister of hers did).

_And now this, on top of everything else I have to deal with. Gods, barely over thirty and I'm already a widow!_

But she was still young enough to have a hope of bearing a child… IF she could find a suitable pureblood wizard who was willing to take up with her.

Not that she had her heart set on remarrying, or anything. But after taking care Draco like this, she was starting to wonder if maybe she really _did_ want a child of her own after all.

Her thoughts on the matter were interrupted when her adorable nephew decided he was done with his breakfast and threw what was left of it onto the floor.

Bellatrix vanished the mess with a flick of her wand, then leveled a glare at Draco and told him in no uncertain terms, "The next time you throw food on my floor, I'm going to make you eat it."

And the child had no doubt that she meant it. He was only one and a half years old, but she'd already successfully potty-trained him by terrifying him into it… just because she hated changing diapers.

"I be good," Draco promised, holding out his hands in the gesture for pick-me-up.

"We're going somewhere today," Bellatrix informed her nephew as she lifted him out of the high chair. "So you have to be on your best behavior, or I'm going to leave you in the nursery all by yourself for the rest of the day - no matter how much you cry." She would - she'd done it before. Depriving him of her company seemed to be the quickest route to rectifying any unfavorable behaviors he might be tempted to exhibit.

"No," Draco whined, clinging to her with the hand that wasn't clutching his stuffed crow. "I be good."

"Well, as long as we're clear on that…"

The place that they were going that morning turned out to be a store, but not one that had anything of particular interest to a small child. Bellatrix set him down at her feet while she took a closer look at a certain item. Draco knew better than to wander off (having already faced his aunt's wrath after a going-missing-in-a-shop episode earlier that week) and stayed put, one hand clutching Bella's skirts while he used the other to stuff the wing of his toy crow into his mouth.

"So, your husband just died and you're _shopping for curtains_?" a semi-familiar male voice rang out sarcastically behind her.

"I'm redoing the nursery," Bellatrix replied distractedly.

"You're pregnant?!" the man (she still couldn't quite place _whose_ voice that was) asked, sounding more shocked than Bellatrix thought his assumption warranted.

"No," she snapped. "It's for Draco."

"So Narcissa's moved in with you, then?"

At this, she finally turned to look and saw that the person who'd been talking to her was none other than her cousin, Sirius Black.

-tbc-

**A/N: Reviews are love.**


	5. Reckless Fire

--Burn Now--  
(What Was Once Breathing)

At the mention of his mother's name, Draco started to put up a fuss. Bellatrix leaned down and scooped him up, settling him on her hip.

Sirius hadn't even noticed that the child was with her until that moment.

"No, Narcissa is…ill," she answered her cousin's question distractedly while attempting to comfort her nephew.

Sirius was shocked speechless at seeing Bellatrix - _horrible, pure evil Bellatrix_ - acting so caring and motherly toward her nephew. Her actions seemed natural and practiced, as if she'd been doing this for a while now… And something about the shifty look in her eyes when she said Narcissa was ill made him think there was more going on here than she wanted him to know.

"What really happened to Narcissa?" Sirius hissed, grabbing Bellatrix's wrist.

Draco became frightened by this action and started to cry, but Bella shushed him quickly. She threw a sharp glare at Sirius, who subsequently removed his hand from her arm.

The cousins didn't quite know how to proceed at this point. They couldn't very well just walk away from this encounter as if it had never happened.

In the ensuing silence, Draco melted against his aunt's shoulder in that way only small children can and asked tearfully, "Go see muvver?"

"No, honey, we're not going to go see your mother today," she answered softly, petting Draco's hair.

"Maybe we should," Sirius said contemplatively. He still had no idea what was really going on with her.

"That's really not a good idea," Bellatrix protested weakly. She felt sick at the thought of seeing her sister like that again, and of the effect that going to the Malfoy house again would have on Draco. She really didn't want to have to listen to him crying for hours on end when she had no way to comfort him.

But Sirius seemed to be honestly concerned about Narcissa (he had never gotten along as well with her as he did with Andromeda, but he also hadn't gotten along with her as poorly as he did with Bellatrix) and in the end he convinced her to go against her better judgment.

When they arrived at Malfoy Manor, it was on fire.

_In her state, Narcissa probably hadn't had the sense to get out_…

Bella pushed Draco into Sirius's arms and sprinted toward the house. But it turned out that Narcissa was not in dire need of rescue, because Bellatrix found her skulking around outside, a safe distance away, watching the house burn.

Narcissa flinched when she felt her sister's hand latch onto her shoulder.

"You burned your own house down to collect the insurance?" Bellatrix asked incredulously, having quickly figured out upon seeing Narcissa outside that the fire was not accidental as she had initially assumed.

"I ran out of things to sell, I needed money…" Narcissa explained weakly. She didn't sound remorseful or even embarrassed about her situation. Getting her next fix was the only concern that registered in her mind.

Bellatrix didn't bother to reply. She wasn't going to waste time arguing. She took a firm hold of Narcissa's wrist and dragged her back to where Sirius was waiting.

Draco was whimpering, upset at being left alone with a stranger. Bella took the child and handed Narcissa off to Sirius. He held her by the wrist in the same manner that Bellatrix had. One look at his little blond cousin told Sirius exactly what was wrong with her.

"We need to get her to a hospital," he said.

Bellatrix bit her lip. "Do you really think the people at St. Mungo's would be able to help her?"

She didn't want the rest of the wizarding world to get wind of her sister's condition.

"Not St. Mungo's," Sirius replied grimly. "We'll have to take her to a muggle drug rehabilitation clinic."

-tbc-

**A/N: 50 pts if you get the reference in the chapter title.**

**Reviews are love.**


	6. Ash

-- Burn Now --  
(What Was Once Breathing)

Not long after Narcissa was admitted to the facility, she committed suicide. Bellatrix had been telling people that her sister was suffering from an illness these past few months when they asked her why she was caring for Draco, so it was a simple matter to cover up Narcissa's death by saying that the sickness had finally done her in.

The funeral was poorly attended, and Bellatrix herself did not show up because she didn't want to expose Draco to the sight of his mother's corpse being closed in the casket then buried in the ground. He was too young to understand the concept of death, but Bella knew he would be traumatized if he was told that he could never see his mother again.

Reading the morning paper the day after Narcissa's funeral, Bellatrix saw that her cousin had gotten himself thrown in prison for murdering Peter Pettigrew and some ridiculously high (probably exaggerated) amount of muggles with a single curse.

_What an idiot Sirius is. And I STILL need to buy new curtains for the nursery_.

"Draco, honey, guess what? We're going shopping again today…"

While they were out shopping, they passed by a toy store that had a prominent display of plush dragons in the window.

"My dwagon!" Draco cried out as he spotted the display in the shop window. "Behwa, Behwa, my dwagon!!"

He pointed excitedly. She turned to look where he was pointing and saw that there was indeed a dragon that looked very much like the one her nephew had thrown in the fire.

"That's not your dragon. Yours got burned up in the fire, remember? That's a different one, a new one," Bellatrix explained.

She could see that he understood the difference, but she took him into the shop and bought him the dragon anyway because she could also see that knowing the difference didn't stop him from _wanting_ it and he was ready to throw a screaming fit right there in public if she didn't give him what he wanted. Also, her guilt over Narcissa's untimely death pushed Bella to give in to her urges to spoil the child.

Once the child had the toy in his hands, he examined it closely and she could practically see the gears turning in his head as he figured out for himself that this really _wasn't_ the same dragon as the one he had previously owned.

After a few mintues, clutching his new dragon closely, Draco looked up at his aunt curiously and asked, "You my new muvver?"

The question caught Bellatrix by surprise and she felt a flash of panic, unsure how to answer.

"I…" She swallowed. "Yes, I am."

-tbc-

**Reviews are love.**


	7. Shining Rebirth

-- Burn Now --  
(What Was Once Breathing)

**1994 Triwizard Tournament**

Bellatrix was sitting among the other clueless spectators - unaware that something had gone horribly wrong in the Triwizard maze - when she felt her Mark burn.

_It's burning, it's REALLY burning_... she thought to herself in disbelief. _He's calling me_.

Technically he was calling all of his Death Eaters to his side, but in her mind the others were irrelevant. All that mattered was that her master was calling for _her_ and she had to find some way to get to him. She'd have to sneak out of the castle grounds somehow before she would be able to apparate to where he was.

Meanwhile in a faraway graveyard, the Dark Lord scowled at the small gathering of followers who had shown up. Many of his followers had died or been thrown in Azkaban (or been thrown in Azkaban, then died). Still more had turned traitor and renounced the Dark Lord and were now afraid to return to him. Snape would report to the Dark Lord later at a time when his absence from the school would not be conspicuous, so as not to blow his cover as a spy.

But that still left one person unnaccounted for, one that Voldemort was disappointed to find had not shown up. He would hate to have to kill her.

As he addressed his minions, and throughout his duel with Harry Potter, the Dark Lord could not help wondering in the back of his mind where Bellatrix was.

In the end Potter escaped. After his embarassing defeat, Voldemort dismissed his minions.

He was about to leave the graveyard himself when he heard hurried footsteps behind him.

"My lord!" a panicked voice called out. A breathless, distinctly feminine, panicked voice.

He turned and saw Bellatrix running toward him. She stopped a good three feet in front of him.

"I'm sorry," she gasped out, not stopping to catch her breath in her rush to explain. "I would have been here sooner... but I was at the school... to watch the tournament... I had to sneak out of the castle... before I could apparate..." She stopped talking and drew in several deep breaths before speaking again. "I'm sorry, my lord."

Well, now he knew the answer to the question that had been plaguing him. His most loyal follower _was_ still loyal to him, after all.

"It's alright," he said, closing the distance between them. "What matters is that you made every effort to return." And she hadn't witnessed the Potter boy overpowering him, for which he was grateful.

Unlike the rest of his followers who'd shown up today, Bellatrix wasn't dressed in her Death Eater robes. She was wearing a simple gown made of scarlet silk that showed off her figure without being too revealing. Over it she wore a thin cloak of delicate black lace - which he figured was purely ornamental because he didn't think that it could possibly keep her warm. He had almost forgotten how beautiful she was. It had been thirteen years since they'd last seen each other. Her hair was longer now - she used to keep it at shoulder length and now it fell halfway down her back - but otherwise she didn't appear to have aged a day since the last time he had seen her.

But his words did not placate her.

"I'm sorry," she continued to apologize. "I wanted to look for you, I tried, but I had to look after Draco, and I couldn't-"

Taking her chin in his hand, he tilted her head back and sealed his mouth over hers in a hard kiss, effectively cutting off the flow of words. She froze, too stunned by his actions to do anything else.

"Enough," he said firmly, after breaking the kiss. "You do not need to apologize. You did what you could. You've raised Draco well. He is loyal to the cause and in a few years he will make a fine addition to my Death Eaters. There is only one thing I would ask you to do for me now..." He trailed off, awaiting her response.

"Yes, my lord, anything," she breathed, still light-headed from the kiss.

"I want you raise more children."

Her brow furrowed and he could see that she was confused by the request.

"Whose?" she asked, nonplussed. She didn't know of any other orphaned pureblood childen. (Well, Lucius was still alive so Draco wasn't technically an orphan, but still...)

"Your own," he stated flatly, as if the answer should have been obvious.

"My husband is dead," she said, frowning. "And there aren't really many pureblood wizards left who are unmarried, on our side, and not in Azkaban..." She would know. She'd spent a lot of time considering potential breeding partners. So far she'd figured out that her search was pretty much hopeless unless she wanted to risk trying convert a blood traitor back to the dark side, or else wait for a suitable male to be released from prison. "Unless..." She looked up at him coyly through the screen of her eyelashes and put forth hesitantly, "My lord... if it was yours..."

The words were hardly out of her mouth before his lips locked over hers again. Bellatrix was a temptation that had always proven hard for him to resist, but he had never caved in to this particular desire in the past - mostly because she had already been married to Rodolphus before the Dark Lord met her. But things were different now. Her husband was dead. And it had been too long since the last time Voldemort been with a woman, too long since the last time he'd had a corporeal body and could _feel_ these sensations.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing herself closely against him as she eagerly returned his kisses. Not breaking the kiss, he backed her against the nearest headstone and lifted her up onto it, pushing her skirt up around her waist.

And there, on his filthy muggle father's grave, he laid claim to the pureblooded dark beauty who would do anything for him.

-tbc-

**A/N: I decided to go ahead and jump forward in time without going into any more detail about Draco's childhood, as you can see. Yay, this chapter turned out long XD**

**Reviews are love.**


	8. Scarlet Smoke

**A/N: It was difficult for me to keep this T-rated, but I would have been embarassed to post it otherwise. Enjoy.**

-- Burn Now --  
(What Was Once Breathing)

After they were finished, Voldemort lifted Bellatrix down from the gravestone. She swayed on her feet and he wrapped his arm around her waist to steady her. She leaned against his shoulder, still breathing heavily from their hurried coupling.

"Are you alright?" he asked, and she could have sworn she heard actual concern in his voice. "Did I hurt you?"

"No," she said, lifting her head. Her expression was pure bliss. "I'm fine. I don't mind if you're rough with me. I'm not some delicate princess who's going to cry over a few bruises. It's just... been awhile..."

It had been a long time since Bellatrix had been touched by anyone but herself. Of course, pleasuring herself was a far cry from being with a man - even a sloppy lover like her husband. Nothing she was able to do by herself could compare to having a man's hands on her, the weight of his body on her hips, his hot breath on her neck and his ragged cries mingling with her own.

Her mind was completely open to Voldemort's as these thoughts bubbled up, and he was treated to several brief flashes of memory in which Bellatrix (in various states of undress) had one hand between her thighs and an almost comical expression of half-frustrated concentration on her face.

Bellatrix was drawn out of her thoughts when she felt the Dark Lord's hands begin to wander over her body, stroking her lush curves through the thin material of her dress.

"More, already?" she asked in surprise. She'd never had a sexual encounter that carried on past the initial act before.

"You're too exhausted to continue? I thought you said you _weren't_ some delicate princess..."

She couldn't tell if he was annoyed with her or just teasing. His tone gave nothing away.

"I suppose you could say I'm just not very experienced," she replied, her sentence trailing off into a moan as he trailed hot kisses down her neck. "I've had only a few lovers, none of whom were particularly skilled." Including her husband, which she somehow managed to refrain from saying aloud.

"I'll show you how it's done properly, then," he murmured against her skin. It was at that moment that he remembered they were in the middle of a graveyard. He pulled away from her slightly. "We should go somewhere else."

He was hesitant to take her back to the Riddle house, though. It was the home of his filthy muggle ancestors (and besides _that_, it was a complete wreck).

"Here's fine. There's no one around," she argued, unfastening her cloak and letting it slide to the ground, as if to prove her point.

It would be uncomfortable in a place like this, which is why he wanted to go somewhere else.

_Well, I'll just have to make it as comfortable for her as I can_...

Luckily, no one at the school missed her presence in the following hours, thanks to the chaos caused by Cedric's corpse and Harry Potter's announcement that the Dark Lord had returned.

-tbc-

**Reviews are love.**


	9. Firebrand

~ Burn Now ~  
(What Was Once Breathing)

Later that night, when the Dark Lord was laying exhausted beside Bellatrix in her bed - his lust for her momentarily sated - he finally realized what had been bothering him about her appearance since he first saw her fully unclothed.

"What happened to your Mark?" he asked, running his fingers lightly over the smooth blank skin of her left wrist.

"Oh, it's still there," she answered, a small evil smile spreading slowly over her face. "But it would have looked suspicious if I tried to keep it covered at all times, and a glamour would have been detectable, so… I took a knife and peeled off the top layer of skin. Even with healing spells and potions to speed the process along, it was _years_ before it looked right."

He silently turned the information over in his mind for a few long moments before finally asking, "Why would you do that?"

"Well, who knows what would have happened to Draco if I'd been caught and thrown in Azkaban? I was the last living blood relative he had who wasn't incarcerated at the time." He noticed she'd failed to mention her blood-traitor sister, who was still alive and had never been incarcerated. The thing she had probably feared most back then had been that if she were arrested, Draco would have been transferred into the care of Andromeda and her Mudblood husband. Bella's voice became breathy as she offered, "You can Mark me again if you want."

"No," he said. "I have never Marked someone twice before, and attempting such a thing could lead to unpredictable results."

Her original Mark was still there, and they knew that it was still active because she had responded to his call earlier tonight. Piling the same spell on top of itself again could cause a volatile reaction between the magic that was already ingrained in her skin and the newly cast version. There was still so much that even the most knowledgeable of wizards did not understand about the nature of magic, the dark arts especially… It wasn't a risk he was willing to take. And besides that, keeping Bella as a covert operative might prove more advantageous to him than having her mixed among the rest of his loyal ranks.

While he was pondering that, apparently Bellatrix's mind had wandered along the path of a different subject, because the next thing she said was, "I suppose, once we break everyone out of prison, Draco and Lucius will have to meet each other sometime."

"Yes, about that… does Draco even know who his father is, and that he is still alive?" the Dark Lord asked. From his tone, it was clear that he was skeptical as to whether Bellatrix had ever told her nephew that she was, in fact, not actually his mother.

She sighed heavily. "I explained it to him when he was ten and asked me why we have different last names from each other. I didn't think he was old enough to handle all of the gruesome details of it-" Such as his mother's drug addiction and subsequent suicide, and the crime for which his father was incarcerated. "-but he knows the basics of it, and who his biological parents are."

"He still calls you 'Mother'."

"Yes, and I suspect he always will. Does it bother you?"

"Not particularly, I just find it odd."

"What's so odd about it? I'm the one who raised him. He doesn't even have a single clear memory of Narcissa. Even though he knows that I am biologically his aunt, he thinks of me as his mother."

The Dark Lord yawned and pretended he was bored by the subject but secretly he was fascinated by the dynamics of the parent-and-child relationship. Having no firsthand experience with it himself, he had no clue about how families typically worked. And he figured he needed to learn about it, since he was planning to become a father himself sometime in the near future.

~to be continued~

**A/N: reviews are love.**


	10. Priming Powder

Burn Now  
(What Was Once Breathing)

**Christmas 1995**

After the mass breakout from Azkaban, the Death Eaters' base of operations was the basement of the burnt-out ruin that was once Malfoy Manor. Their master, however, spent much of his time away from the base, at the home of his lover.

Lucius Malfoy had heard about the fire and Narcissa's subsequent death from a mysterious illness many years before while he was in Azkaban, and he had spent most of his prison sentence agonizing over the loss of his ancestral home and beloved wife. Now that he was free, and able to form positive thoughts once more, he was glad that his former home could be of some use to his master.

It was several days after the prisonbreak when Lucius found himself being summoned to speak with the Dark Lord in private.

Lord Voldemort regarded the nearly-skeletal remains of his right-hand wizard carefully for a moment before speaking. Lucius did not in any way attempt to hide his thoughts from his master, and the Dark Lord saw that Lucius seemed to have no clue what this meeting could possibly be about.

"Lucius," the Dark Lord finally broke the silence. "You are one of my most loyal followers, and I have already told you that you will be well rewarded for your loyalty…"

He trailed off and looked at his servant expectantly.

"Yes, my lord," Lucius replied. His voice was steady, but his nerves were rattled. It seemed that his master was waiting for some kind of specific response, but Lucius did not know what it was that he was expected to say.

The Dark Lord waited, but it soon became apparent that Lucius had nothing more to say.

"I am surprised that you have not asked to see your son."

"I have a son?" Lucius asked, sounding genuinely surprised. He had no memory of any such thing.

The Dark Lord sighed. Of course, having a son was a matter of intense pride among pureblood families and had been the happiest thing in his life before he was hauled off to Azkaban. Lucius's memories of Draco had been completely destroyed by the Dementors.

"Yes, you have a son," he answered. "His name is Draco, and he is being raised by your wife's sister."

"Not the muggle-lover?" Lucius gasped in horror.

"No, not that one," the Dark Lord answered. He was quickly growing exasperated with this conversation. "Bellatrix."

_Bellatrix wasn't arrested back then? And is still alive? But, all of the Death Eaters were summoned the night of the breakout… and she wasn't there._

His thoughts were as clear to Voldemort as if he had spoken them aloud.

"She is still alive," the Dark Lord confirmed. "She does not attend the meetings because her role is now that of a caretaker, raising the next generation of Death Eaters."

"Including Draco?" Lucius asked. His voice was now colored with pride and awe at the mention of his son.

"Yes." And now that they were back to the point they'd started from… "Would you like to see your son?"

~to be continued~

**A/N: I know it's been forever since I updated… There's this thing called real life and I accidentally remembered that I have one. O…O**

**Reviews are love.**


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